Page 14 of Tapeworld Induction

The flag on screen was replaced by talking heads discussing the costs and benefits of Brexit over the years. How the UK’s independence from the EU made it its own Tech Kingdom after the Dark Year.

Bleurgh. That’s enough of that.

Dylan got up. “I’m off to work. Don’t celebrate Brexit too hard.” She headed back to her room to finish getting ready.

Her dad laughed, shouting after her, “You haven’t finished your brekkie yet! And you know we were always against Brexit!”

The city landscape flew by the train window as she made her way to work. Among the various digital displays they passed were large banners that celebrated the recent re-election of Prime Minister Elizabeth Summers, leader of the Green Party. She was popular, and her policies had helped push the doomsday clock quite far back. Global warming was being tackled, all hands on deck. Yet most understood that the power of the country’s Prime Minister was limited by the First Kingdom’s designs. The multinational companies of the past had only engorged themselves over the years to the point that they had been, for some time now, grander than nations. To their employees, their company was more important than their country. It was their Kingdom.

Dylan’s mind drifted from Summers’s giant face to Isaak’s. A silly smile curled her lips, but she caught herself before risking displaying emotion on public transport.

It was going to be another boring day of outreach at the office. Dylan’s department was tasked with canvassing people to go vegan. Lots had already done so, but a small vocal minority was keeping the farms running and animals were still being mistreated and slaughtered to accommodate this resistance.

The Green Party hadn’t made omnivorous diets for recovering ideopaths completely illegal, but Dylan reckoned they should. Would have made her job easier, for one. She wouldn’t have to deal with so many folks angry at the prospect of the loss of their meat-eating rights. It seemed unlikely that particular demographic would go to the streets if that happened. But people who clung to the old ways did fight back against progress in the past. Like the Second Revivalists. Nowadays, the Kingdom enacted an unacknowledged policy of keeping track of any protests, through tight surveillance. Security cameras were everywhere in London, and StreetSocial was constantly monitored for posts inciting unrest.

When she finally settled into her assigned seat in the vast open office, she placed the padded headphones over her ears and clicked the button that automatically started calling a randomised target on the list.

“Hello?” a male voice answered.

“Hi, this is Dylan at the Office for Veganism—”

“Hello?”

She prepared to start from the top. “Hi, this is Dylan at the Office for—”

“Who’s there?”

She stopped herself again, moved slightly away from her desk, and straightened her top, trying to get rid of the wrinkles in it. She took a deep breath and started to troubleshoot this person’s problem – whether it was technical, or turned out to be something other.

“Hello? Can you hear me, Mr Halifax?”

“Ahhh, there you are.”

It sounded like it had finally all clicked on the other end. “Great, I’ll take that as a—”

“I can hear you,” he interrupted.

Dylan tried to talk again, but Mr Halifax kept talking at the same time. Must have been a delay because of his reception. She tried not to let her frustration get the better of her.

“Listen, Mr Halifax, will you let me speak?”

“Certainly!”

“I’m—”

“Dylan, you said!”

“I work at the—”

“Office for Veganism.”

She pushed the microphone on her headset away from her mouth and sighed before pushing it back. “Right, and I’d like to—”

“Thing is,” the man said, “I already give.”

“Excuse me?”

“For the vegans, I already give. Copious amounts!”